I Thought Love Had to Be Earned Through Chores, They Hugged Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Price List
Her rich mother finds ten-year-old Minnie crouched over a clogged drain, and Minnie offers her a price list; at the Westbrook mansion she cleans her own bedroom, sleeps in the storage room, and tells her disgusted brother that hitting is fine too.
I was elbow-deep in the diner's back drain when a woman in diamonds ran across the parking lot, crying my name.
Not my name, exactly.
A name I didn't use.
"Minnie!"
I pulled my arm out of the drain.
It came up black to the shoulder and smelled like three days of fryer grease.
The woman kept coming, heels and all, right through the puddles.
I scrambled backward on my knees.
"No, no, ma'am, stop. I'm filthy. If I get that dress dirty, I can't pay for it."
She cried harder.
Clients who cry are the worst kind. You never know what they want.
I dug into my apron pocket and pulled out my price list.
It was on an order pad, in pencil, folded in four.
I held it up to her with my clean hand.
"Please don't cry. What do you need? Cooking, laundry, drains, small appliances. It's all free. No charge. I mean it."
She took the list.
She read it.
Then she grabbed me, mud and grease and all, and pressed me into the front of a dress that probably cost more than the diner.
"Minnie," she said into my hair. "I'm your mother."
My head went white.
Mother.
I patted my pockets with my free hand.
Twenty-three dollars and fifty cents. Everything I owned.
"Ma'am, I've never done the claim-a-mom service before," I said. "Is twenty-three fifty enough? I can do installments."
Behind her, a tall man in a gray suit turned away and pressed his fist to his mouth.
A younger man stood behind him with his arms folded.
He was maybe twenty. Dark hair, gray eyes.
He stepped up and pulled the woman off me by the elbow.
"Mom. The DNA isn't back. We don't even know if she's really Minnie Westbrook."
I understood right away.
I nodded at him.
"That's smart. Inspect the goods first. Don't get stuck with a bad hire. Bad hires turn into disputes."
His face went a little green.
My boss had come out the back door to watch.
She was the one who'd posted the video of me at the dish pit.
"Better than an industrial dishwasher," she'd typed under it. "And she don't even use electricity."
Now she looked at the diamonds and didn't say a word.
The hospital in town did the test.
It took three hours.
I waited outside, because hospitals don't like mud on their chairs.
The front steps had cigarette butts packed in every crack.
I picked them out one at a time with a bobby pin and put them in a paper cup.
When the door opened behind me, the woman was holding a sheet of paper and crying so hard the tall man had to hold her up.
I was their daughter.
Taken seven years ago, at three, from a picnic blanket at a summer festival in Wisconsin.
My name was Minnie Westbrook.
My mother's name was Philippa. My father was Harlan.
The boy with the locked face was my brother, Wesley.
He didn't come down the steps.
He stood at the top with his hands in his pockets and looked at my cup of cigarette butts.
On the drive north, my mother held my hand the whole way.
Her thumb found the calluses on my palm.
She went quiet, and then she started crying again.
I hate it when clients cry. It means the service isn't good enough.
"Would you like a massage?" I asked. "Neck and shoulders. I've got a certificate. I can show you."
"Minnie, honey. You don't have to work."
My smile stopped working.
Don't have to work.
Then what did they want me for?
I'd heard about people who buy kids for parts.
I put my hand on my lower back and tried to remember if you can live on one kidney.
You can. I was almost sure you can.
The house was on a lake, three floors, white stone, with more windows than the hospital.
The front door opened before we reached it.
A girl in a white dress flew down the steps and threw her arms around my mother.
She was older than me. Eighteen, maybe. Blonde, with eyes already wet.
"Mom," she sobbed. "Now that my sister's home, do you want me to leave?"
"Don't be silly, Odette." My mother stroked her hair. "You're both my daughters."
Odette looked at me over my mother's shoulder.
She smiled.
"Come on, Minnie. I'll show you your room."
There were muddy shoe prints across the front hall.
Mine, mostly.
A housekeeper was coming with a mop.
I took it out of her hands, said thank you, and mopped my way up all three floors behind Odette.
The room at the end of the third floor had a bed with a canopy, a closet you could walk into and a bathroom bigger than any place I'd ever slept.
I stopped at the door.
"This has to be cleaned three times a day at least."
Odette blinked at me. "Minnie. It's your room."
Oh.
My assigned area.
I rolled up my sleeves.
I stripped the bed, washed the windows, scrubbed the tub and found out why the fancy toilet had a sign taped to it.
It had been clogged for six months.
It took me twenty minutes and a coat hanger.
I didn't go down for dinner.
They looked for me for half an hour.
The butler found me in the storage room off the kitchen.
I'd sorted the mops, the vacuum and the cleaning bottles by job, then folded a cardboard box flat in the corner and gone to sleep on it.
I was holding the toilet cleaner, in case.
My phone was on the floor beside me.
It said 4:00 a.m., and under it: Get up. Scrub outside walls. Pass probation fast.
My mother picked up the phone and read it.
Her tears dripped onto the screen.
Wesley stood in the doorway and didn't come in.
"Stop crying, Mom," he said flatly. "She's doing it on purpose."
The voices woke me.
I sat straight up.
"What happened? Where's the mess?"
Wesley stared at me.
I stared back.
He looked angry, and I knew what angry men want, so I said it carefully, to show I was willing.
"Wesley, hitting's fine too. I can take a punch. I'll still be up at four."
Nobody in the storage room moved.
Nobody even breathed.
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